Something Got a Hold of Me

Conservatism, Identity, and COVID-19 in Brazil

Frederico Bertholini

2020-12-08

1 Agenda:

2 Fear of death and polarization

2.1 COVID-19 as an exogenous shock

A call to arms, but which war will leaders fight?

The false dilemma of Bolsonaro:

Economic consequences
vs.
Risks to health

Group attainment

In-group > against social distancing (and in favor of Bolsonaro)2 Aligned with this position, presidents of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko; and Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, also refused to enact measures of social distancing. At the beginning of the pandemic, the presidents of the United States, Donald Trump; Mexico, López Obrador; Russia, Vladimir Putin; and the Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, were also reluctant to support social distancing, but ended up changing their position and started to advocate that the population stay at home.
vs.
Out-group > in favor of social distancing (and against Bolsonaro)

This also turned into a federative conflict (Bolsonaro vs. State Governors) but we will go back to that conflict later

2.2 Still a divided country, but how?

  1. The Workers’ Party (PT) center-left wing hegemonic, institutionalized and “traditional” party

  2. Bolsonaro, who adopted the notion of “antipetismo” (Anti-PT) 5 (Bello 2019; Samuels & Zucco 2018) and grasped the expectations of another social group and promised to deliver “new politics” based on anti-establishment

2.3 Bolsonaro, THE populist

2.4 Polarizing the disease (or the fight against it)

2.5 The right - Bolsonaro was wrong?

2.6 The pandemic impacted popularity in Different ways

2.7 At that time (may, 2020)

The right was now divided: how identity connections between the group and its leader changed?

3 Federative conflict and the politics of denial

3.1 A new role for State Governors

State Governors, however, were also divided

3.2 Underreporting in coronavirus cases

3.3 If you don’t test, there is no COVID19

4 Identity and populist communication

4.1 ‘We need to get back to normal life’

4.2 A collection of insults

4.3 Second round (july)

4.4 Understanding the role of Conservatism

Conjoint experiment:

  1. Values: conservative vs. liberal

  2. Issues: social inclusion vs. fighting against corruption

  3. Economic policy: state oriented vs. market oriented

  4. Political parties: coalition-based government vs. governing without an alliance

4.5 In-group now turned into out-group

4.6 How would they behave in 2022

4.7 Conservatism is the motor

4.8 Stronger ties?

Feelings of attachment generate loyalty to the members of each group and feelings of security and prestige. However, individuals who do not belong to a group develop hostility and aversion to the values and beliefs of this group, considered rival and, potentially, enemies. The intrinsic importance of sharing identities and reciprocal loyalties can be perceived among individuals who belong to a group (in-group), and a distancing of individuals who would be outside that group (out-group), leading to biases in favor of their own group and contrary to the rival 9 (Hameleers, 2016)

5 The vaccine wars

5.1 The vaccine revolt visited

Rio de Janeiro, 1904, smallpox outbreak Wikipedia

Brazil, 2020, compulsory vaccination (not anti-vax, just against obligation)

5.2 Compulsory vaccination

5.3 Renda Cidadã experiment

5.4 Bolsonaro vs. Doria (again!)

Bolsonaro survived COVID-19, we all hope that Brazil will survive Bolsonaro